The roles of a SharePoint Admin and a SharePoint Site Collection Administrator are distinct within the Microsoft SharePoint environment, each with different scopes of responsibilities, permissions, and access levels. Below is a detailed comparison of these roles based on their responsibilities, permissions, and access to SharePoint site settings.
1. SharePoint Admin
Responsibilities
- Tenant-Wide Management: A SharePoint Admin manages the entire SharePoint Online tenant (or on-premises SharePoint farm) within Microsoft 365. This includes overseeing all site collections, services, and configurations at the tenant or farm level.
- Global Configuration: They configure tenant-wide settings, such as storage quotas, external sharing policies, OneDrive for Business settings, and hybrid configurations (for on-premises environments).
- Service Administration: Responsible for managing SharePoint-related services, including user profiles, managed metadata, search settings, and app catalog configurations.
- Security and Compliance: They manage security settings, such as data loss prevention (DLP) policies, information governance, and compliance features like retention policies.
- Monitoring and Troubleshooting: Monitors the health of the SharePoint environment, resolves tenant-level issues, and works with Microsoft support for service-related problems.
- User Access Management: Assigns site collection administrators, manages tenant-level permissions, and oversees access control for the entire SharePoint environment.
Permissions
- Global or Tenant-Level Access: SharePoint Admins typically have the SharePoint Administrator role in Microsoft 365, granting them full control over all SharePoint Online settings in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
- Central Administration Access: In on-premises environments, they have access to SharePoint Central Administration, allowing them to manage farm-wide settings.
- Full Control Over Site Collections: They can access and manage any site collection within the tenant, including creating, deleting, or modifying site collections.
- Service-Level Permissions: They can configure services like search, user profiles, and term stores, which are beyond the scope of individual site collections.
- No Direct Site Content Management: While they can access site content, their role focuses on administration rather than day-to-day content management (e.g., editing lists or libraries).
Access to SharePoint Site Settings
- Tenant-Level Settings: They have access to the SharePoint Admin Center, where they can manage tenant-wide settings, such as:
- Creating and deleting site collections.
- Configuring sharing settings (external, internal, anonymous).
- Managing storage quotas and resource allocations.
- Setting up hub sites and site designs/templates.
- Site Collection Settings: They can access and modify settings for any site collection, including site permissions, navigation, and features, but typically delegate these tasks to Site Collection Administrators.
- Global Features: They can enable or disable features that affect all sites, such as SharePoint apps, custom scripts, or modern site features.
2. SharePoint Site Collection Administrator
Responsibilities
- Site Collection Management: A Site Collection Administrator manages a specific site collection, which is a group of sites under a single top-level site. Their scope is limited to their assigned site collection.
- Site Configuration: They configure settings specific to the site collection, such as site permissions, navigation, themes, and site features.
- Content Management Oversight: They oversee content within the site collection, including lists, libraries, pages, and subsites (in classic SharePoint).
- User Access Control: They manage permissions for users and groups within the site collection, granting or revoking access to sites, lists, or libraries.
- Feature Activation: They can activate or deactivate site collection features, such as publishing features or workflows, within their scope.
- Limited Tenant-Wide Impact: Their actions are confined to the site collection, and they cannot affect other site collections or tenant-wide settings.
Permissions
- Full Control Within Site Collection: Site Collection Administrators have Full Control permissions within their assigned site collection, allowing them to manage all aspects of the site, including content, settings, and permissions.
- No Tenant-Level Access: They cannot access the SharePoint Admin Center or manage tenant-wide settings like storage quotas or external sharing policies.
- Subsite Management: They can create, modify, or delete subsites (in classic SharePoint) and manage content within the site collection.
- No Access to Other Site Collections: Unless explicitly assigned, they cannot access or manage other site collections in the tenant.
Access to SharePoint Site Settings
- Site Collection Settings: They have full access to the Site Settings page of the top-level site in their site collection, where they can:
- Manage site permissions (add/remove users, create permission groups).
- Configure site navigation, themes, and branding.
- Activate or deactivate site collection features (e.g., publishing, workflows).
- Manage site columns, content types, and term store integration (if enabled).
- Content Management: They can create and manage lists, libraries, pages, and web parts within the site collection.
- Limited Scope: They cannot modify tenant-wide settings or access settings for other site collections unless explicitly granted permissions.
Key Differences
Practical Example
- SharePoint Admin: Suppose an organization needs to enable external sharing for all SharePoint sites. The SharePoint Admin would log into the SharePoint Admin Center, configure the external sharing policy, and allocate additional storage to specific site collections. They might also assign a Site Collection Administrator to a new site collection.
- Site Collection Administrator: A Site Collection Administrator for a team site might create a document library, set unique permissions for a specific group, and customize the site’s navigation to suit the team’s needs. They cannot, however, change tenant-wide sharing policies or access another team’s site collection.
Additional Notes
- Hierarchy: The SharePoint Admin has higher authority and can override or manage settings that affect Site Collection Administrators. For example, they can assign or remove Site Collection Administrators.
- Modern vs. Classic SharePoint: In modern SharePoint Online, the role of Site Collection Administrator is often supplemented by Site Owners (who have full control at the site level but not necessarily the entire site collection). The SharePoint Admin’s role remains consistent across both environments.
- On-Premises vs. Online: In on-premises SharePoint, the SharePoint Admin’s role is similar but involves more server-level management (e.g., farm administration). Site Collection Administrators’ responsibilities remain largely the same in both environments.